Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

of the breakers--it was as if the wretched beings had under them the
black yawn of the infinite.
They felt themselves sinking into Death's peaceful depths. The height
between the vessel and the water was lessening--that was all. They could
calculate her disappearance to the moment. It was the exact reverse of
submersion by the rising tide. The water was not rising towards them;
they were sinking towards it. They were digging their own grave. Their
own weight was their sexton.
They were being executed, not by the law of man, but by the law of
things.
The snow was falling, and as the wreck was now motionless, this white
lint made a cloth over the deck and covered the vessel as with a
winding-sheet.
The hold was becoming fuller and deeper--no means of getting at the
leak. They struck a light and fixed three or four torches in holes as
best they could. Galdeazun brought some old leathern buckets, and they
tried to bale the hold out, standing in a row to pass them from hand to
hand; but the buckets were past use, the leather of some was unstitched,
there were holes in the bottoms of the others, and the buckets emptied
themselves on the way. The difference in quantity between the water
which was making its way in and that which they returned to the sea was
ludicrous--for a ton that entered a glassful was baled out; they did not
improve their condition. It was like the expenditure of a miser, trying
to exhaust a million, halfpenny by halfpenny.
The chief said, "Let us lighten the wreck."
During the storm they had lashed together the few chests which were on
deck. These remained tied to the stump of the mast. They undid the
lashings and rolled the chests overboard through a breach in the
gunwale. One of these trunks belonged to the Basque woman, who could not
repress a sigh.
"Oh, my new cloak lined with scarlet! Oh, my poor stockings of
birchen-bark lace! Oh, my silver ear-rings to wear at mass on May Day!"
The deck cleared, there remained the cabin to be seen to. It was greatly
encumbered; in it were, as may be remembered, the luggage belonging to
the passengers, and the bales belonging to the sailors. They took the
luggage, and threw it over the gunwale. They carried up the bales and
cast them into the sea.
Thus they emptied the cabin. The lantern, the cap, the barrels, the
sacks, the bales, and the water-butts, the pot of soup, all went over
into the waves.
They unscrewed the nuts of the iron stove, long since extinguished:
they pulled it out, hoisted it on deck, dragged it to the side, and
threw it out of the vessel.
They cast overboard everything they could pull out of the deck--chains,
shrouds, and torn rigging.